Welcome dear reader. This is the first post in a 3 part series on how to recognize a narcissistic system—be that a workplace, an institution, a family, or even a social circle.

Why talk about narcissistic systems on a blog on loneliness?

Because if you are inside a narcissistic system, loneliness is something that system will quietly and deliberately produce. And yet, loneliness is not the only symptom of a narcissistic system, and some people in these systems won’t see themselves as lonely at all. These atomizing, divide and conquer structures are a little more complex than that.

By the end of this post, you will be able to recognize what narcissistic systems are, whether you are inside one of them — and where the nearest exit doors might be. I will also be giving you a simple tool to help you spot them quickly.

That is because narcissistic systems rely on a now identifiable set of values and tactics. The values are what set the stage for certain groups or individuals to gain power and advantage. The tactics are what ensure that those advantage-giving values will be adopted.

You can think of it like this: the values are like Lego bricks—the benign-looking building blocks of stuff like ‘self-responsibility’ or ‘image management.’ On their own, they may not look so suspicious. They may look like the components of a functional, successful life. Or at worst, some inexplicably expensive film-franchise figurine.

Then come the TACTICS. These are like the borderline-legal marketing campaign for said block-based figurine. They ensure that you not only desire the blocks involved, but that your use of them somehow always assembles a stage you are excluded from.

You think you are building a family, a workplace, or an interest-group circle—but because the Lego bricks are designed to build advantage for anyone other than you, you’re actually paying—with your time, your sanity, and your labor—to build someone else’s Death Star.

Yes, this is all about how self-serving empires—from the intergalactic to the hyper-local PTA—will strike, strike back, and ultimately suck everyone into an orbit of structural daddy issues that no amount of Force-invoking mantras can fix.

This is a three part, deep dive, involving psychologists, philosophers, and more, because clarity is the key to escaping this stuff. And as this is a “how to,” I’ll be giving you some very simple tools, so you don’t need to hold all of this in your head. The background is still vital though, because once you understand the patterns, the tools stop feeling abstract and start making sense.

Doing this in three parts will give you space to actually practice what we’re looking at.

Part one sets the stage, by looking at the values narcissistic systems rely on. Part two is the tactics used to enforce them, and part three looks at the roles you might find yourself in as a result, along with the roles those around you might take on.

First, let’s drill down into the idea of narcissistic systems, as opposed to the less complete explanations, which focus on people behaving like pricks.

It’s Not About Individuals

When most people talk about narcissism these days, they are usually talking about individuals. Not surprisingly—because psychology tends to reinforce an atomized view, with the individual as the sole unit of analysis.

But the work of philosopher and sociologist Christopher Lasch forces us to ask a broader question:

What if narcissism is not just a personality type—
but a pattern of operation that structures whole systems?

Meaning: are there systems in which reality is distorted to protect an image — and the cost of that distortion is pushed downward, onto the people inside them?

Because that’s the difference between a narcissistic system and a merely dysfunctional one. It’s not just that harm occurs — it’s how that harm is explained and redistributed to maintain the image of those running the system.

And since Christopher Lasch was writing in the 70s—and enough time has passed for people to stop acting offended and actually check the evidence—we now have a very clear answer.

Narcissistic systems do very much exist.

Thanks to people like Murray Bowen, Salvador Minuchin, and later Alice Miller, the dynamics of one such system has been very well documented:

The narcissistic family system.

And their findings read like spoilers for what we’re about to map out.

Bowen, Minuchin and Miller observed things like:

• triangulation

• blame shifting

• conditional belonging

• scapegoating and

• hypervigilance as a form of self-surveillance and control

In other words—what they observed was not terrifying chaos. OK, it was terrifying, but just like the terror of intergalactic invasions, there was a pattern to it. And patterns are always reassuring—because they can be recognized.

And all this turned out to NOT be just a pattern in families. Jennifer Freyd came along and showed that these same dynamics weren’t confined to the household.

They scale.

What joy. And elaborating on that joy, people like René Girard, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler, who we delve into today, elaborate on how and why the whole list of horrors repeats elsewhere – and, just like narcissistic family systems, how the function is the preservation of power — meaning, stabilizing advantage through reality distortion.

Bringing all of these thinkers together, we see how this occurs at the level of workplaces, institutions, and even at the level of societies.

Because what we are looking at here is a fractal.

A pattern that reproduces itself at every scale—small, medium, large, XXXL—changing its form, but never its logic.

Which means:

What we see in a narcissistic family is not a special case. It’s just the smallest CLEARLY EXPLICATED version of something we can recognise elsewhere. Scale it up, and you get workplaces. Scale it further, and you get institutions. Scale it far enough—and you get societies that work the same way too.

But what way, I hear you ask—unless you really ARE still reeling from 70s-era spoilers and are smashing out some strongly worded objection to something that hasn’t been explained yet.

Because for this to make sense, we need to delve into three things:
- what such systems value,
- how such a system maintains itself, meaning, the tactics it employs,
- and lastly, the roles that emerge from that combo of values and tactics.

Because a narcissistic system is not defined by who is in it. You can actually have a narcissistic system, and none of the people in it being diagnosed with NPD, as Christopher Lasch showed in his work.
Narcissistic systems are defined by what their inner workings DEMAND:
1. that reality be adjusted to preserve an IMAGE and
2. that you bear the burden of the harm that results from propping up other peoples advantage.

The Values Narcissistic Systems Need To Function.

So first up in this how-to on identifying these systems, is values. The ideals these systems hold up as wonderful and shiny. Because values are the moral language that makes the system appear, and even FEEL, legitimate. Even “natural.” If we feel something is natural and legitimate, we won’t just fail to question it. We will internalize it.

And pointed out in early posts, these values aren’t just isolated, self contained units. They function as part of a system of meaning. Each value reinforces and shapes the others, coalescing into what we recognize as good, beneficial, and healthy. And by extension, they also define what is seen as bad, harmful, or undesirable.

So radical individual responsibility on its own, for example, is not a sign of a narcissistic system. What we are looking at is a configuration—values that reinforce each other in ways that produce certain outcomes – particularly in relation to distortions of reality propping up advantage for certain groups.

No one value on its own is diagnostic, but conversely you also don’t need to see every value fully expressed for the pattern to be present. What matters is the direction of the system—the way these values begin to cluster and push towards distortions.

Think of it like that Lego death star. There are a lot of bricks that we don’t necessarily see, cos they are deeper, away from the surface. But they are still THERE and vital to supporting it’s structure and questionable purpose.

So the values that typically work together in narcissistic systems are as follows, and we will go into each one in more depth. They are:

• Radical individual responsibility

• Self-regulation and control

• Image Management

• Competition as natural order

• Conditional belonging
  
  

As usual, these values are not pulled out of my rear end. They correspond to patterns identified in narcissistic family systems by psychologists such as Murray Bowen, Salvador Minuchin, and Alice Miller, who I mentioned before.

I will be bringing in philosophers whose work helps us understand these ideals in larger fractals of these systems. Not every thinker I bring in is describing narcissistic systems directly, but they are still mapping out the organizing principles that such systems require.

1. Radical Individual Responsibility

Lets kick this off with Radical Individual Responsibility. This value was identified by Alice Miller and Murray Bowen in their work on narcissistic systems.

This one is likely familiar to a lot of you, especially if you have ever vomited over a Jo Dispenza book, or similar western spiritualist claptrap. It is the idea that the individual, if they perform the correct actions, will invoke the results that they desire. It treats the self as a causal engine—me as the cue and everyone and everything else as billiard balls.

This value is well liked, in western culture, cos on the surface, this reads as empowerment. Though, if you take it seriously, a god complex. Cos its very much that MY actions count and have effect, and everyone else’s actions stem from MY actions.
As Christopher Lasch observed, this is a problem. He demonstrated how radical individual responsibility produces a culture in which the self becomes not just the solution to everything, but also the problem behind everything.

Because the flip side is unavoidable:

If I am responsible for and capable of producing the outcomes I want, it is also my fault if things don’t go as I like. Like when I somehow don’t get the job I am actually an excellent candidate for. Or when my girlfriend leaves me for a Norwegian poet because shes decided beards and fjords are more socially acceptable than lesbianism.

The distortion Mark Fisher points out, is how structural problems get overlooked or dismissed—and re-framed as personal failure.

Function in Narcissistic Systems

Inside narcissistic systems, the value of radical individual responsibility becomes extremely useful to the person in power, cos if you are having a bad time, they can tell you it’s all your own doing. In other words, distortions about who really IS responsible here.

Lets look at how this shows up. Starting with narcissistic family systems first, cos Miller and Bowen did research on this.

Miller and Bowen noticed that when the child is responsible for their own emotional state, the parent no longer feels responsible for neglect or harm. They don’t hold themselves accountable for their own bad behavior, and the burden of blame is dumped downwards, to the child.

Needs are often framed as a burden,
so neglecting needs gets RE-FRAMED as “teaching independence.”
Lack of care is re-branded as “character building.”

All pretty big distortions. They can show up as expecting kids who are far to young to do so to prepare their own meals, and when the adult does it once or twice, claims “I do so much for you, and you are so ungrateful.” Or when families blame children for needing new clothes, or send them away for crying instead of comforting them, with the assertion that they are being childish or a pain in the ass. It can show up in using them as verbal or physical punching bags, because they are tagged as “to blame” for the parent being in a bad mood.

Covert vs Overt Value Installation.

Now, a quick note here, because some of the tactics for instilling these values are already shining through. Parents can “punish” a child for having needs with just an eye roll or a sigh, and looking “Burdened”. But others shout or hit.

Because the values that set the stage for distorting reality, don’t just sit there in the ether. They’re installed. The tactics install them. Sometimes if wont LOOK like a value is being taught, because it’s installation is subtle. Like eye-rolls or silent treatment. When values are installed with such tactics, meaning, manipulative ones that it is hard to even name or see, the tactics are called covert. When values are installed in a more shouty, brick over the head manner, those tactics are called overt. This is where we get the whole “covert” vs “overt” thing with narcissistic people, but the same goes for narcissistic systems. So just keep in mind that covert is like “covered up” or “clandestine” which start with C, and overt is like open oppression which both start with O.

And in research on narcissistic family systems, you see both. It IS the same for other narcissistic systems, but often the tactics lean more to covert. Clandestine. More on why will follow.

For now, lets look at how the value of radical individual responsibility might show up in the workplace.

This won’t be an exhaustive list—but a common one is being expected to function in conditions that clearly don’t support you, or even actively undermine you—whilst being told, openly or subtly, that the problem is your inability to cope.

Like when you are expected to do the work of two or three people—and when you inevitably can’t keep up, it’s framed as YOUR time-management issues or lack of dedication.

Or when you are told you are not “taking enough initiative” in an environment where the boss gets mad at anyone who can’t read her mind and do exactly what she wants, in the exact way she wants it. The distortion is that your own actions are the issue, when the setup around you actually is.

Now, I want to look at institutions here as well. Because radical individual responsibility maps very clearly onto the bureaucratic parent—the state that is meant to care and support.

If you’ve ever been in this situation, you’ll recognize this immediately.

Applying for financial assistance because of disability, illness, job loss, or simply not being able to make ends meet—for yourself or your kids.
And being treated, not as someone in need of support, but as a burden.
As someone who has “failed” to get their shit together within the system.

Mark Fisher points out the distortion here: structural problems or inequalities get reframed as personal failure. Foucault gives us a sneak peek into why covert ways of installing values are best for this kind of system. Because people begin to internalize this judgment. They start to blame themselves for needing help as well. And as soon as you’re prepared to blame yourself for so-called failure, you can start assuming fault in others too. The fault-finding spreads, and suddenly everyone is going on about how shameful it is to ask for help. We’ll come back to this in part 2—because looking more closely at how systems rope us into doing their work for them is vital to understanding this.

For now, we turn to circles of friends, as a final example of how radical individual responsibility shows up.

Have you ever gone out for drinks with your mates, hoping to forget the crappy stuff that happened that week—only to hear someone say:

“Yeah, he says he had a bad week—but seriously, he invites bad shit to happen. I mean, walking around with that kind of hang-dog look—you’re basically asking to be pick-pocketed.”

Suddenly, being robbed is not about someone else being a prick. It is a reflection of your failure to employ the correct, anti-burglary facial expressions.

2. Competition as Natural Order

Next up is Competition as Natural Order. This is something that seems so natural to us by now, that people may well baulk at its being on the list. That is cos the tactics for installing this particular value have been performed so well on a societal level, that most people already see it as “good.” This is an excellent example of what Antonio Gramsci talks about when he describes cultural hegemony—how the values that benefit the ruling classes are foist onto the rest of us, so we don’t see them as a distortion at all. Instead, they come to feel like common sense

It’s also what Pierre Bourdieu shows us—how systems of advantage get mis-recognized as natural, so that hierarchy looks like merit, and competition is presented as if it were the innate state of the system. And recalling that every value is part of an intricate web, mutually supporting the other values and tactics, a tiny spoiler:
Without competition, tactics like triangulation would fizzle out and fail. And yet, competition, all on its own, does not diagnose a system as narcissistic. Not unless it appears all hooked up to the larger machinery I’m describing.

Lets define what Competition as natural order means, so the distortion is more visible. It is the belief that social life is fundamentally competitive—that constant rivalry between individuals is inevitable, fair and necessary.

Embedded in that is the idea that the resulting hierarchy reflects merit —
and that is the distortion: hierarchy is made to look like merit, meaning those who succeed deserve to, while those who don’t… don’t. It presents itself as a level playing field — where gender, race, physicality and all the rest are treated as neutral in determining how far you are allowed to go.

This helps stabilize advantage because it pits people against each other, striving to PROVE their merit, in order to climb the hierarchy. Groups that might challenge power are far less likely to form if everyone is focused on being better than one another.

Now Bowen showed what this is exactly what happens in narcissistic family systems: The parent instigates games of comparison that encourage sibling rivalry. Each child is focused on being the most pleasing to the parent, seeing the others as a barrier to rewards. Instead of potential allies.

Scaled up, outside the family home, René Girard shows how when rivalry is normalized, tension is distributed between individuals. Resentment of one another grows as each is seen as a threat to the other, again, distorting the possibility that coming together might be beneficial.

And as Michel Foucault and Karl Marx both show in different ways, this isn’t accidental—modern systems actively organize people into competing with one another, encouraging constant comparison and rivalry, and in doing so, keeping them divided. So same thing as Bowen discovered, just on a different scale.

How does this kind of competition show up in narcissistic workplace systems? Well, as an example, where bosses constantly rank you against your co-workers—via performance reviews, targets and metrics—so that your focus is always on pleasing those above you, with more power, and not on helping others around you improve. A colleague getting better, becomes an actual threat. Self focus and self preservation in the eyes of power results. This also, of course, re-enforces the idea of radical individual responsibility.

Competition enters social circles too—where people are subtly compared to one another, and things like careers, relationships, or even happiness become benchmarks, turning connection into quiet rivalry. I saw this a week ago in a pub with some friends. Where big-shot Dave with the corporate job walzed in and bought rounds of expensive shots for everyone, whether we wanted them or not. It was not generosity. It was done with a puffed-up self importance. Dave was proving he could do what others couldn’t - that he was higher in the hierarchy, as demonstrated by his wage. That he had so much money that whether or not we drank or liked our whiskey, wouldn’t hit him in the pocket.

In such circles, things like relationships, careers, or even happiness become benchmarks—so that instead of sharing your journeys through life, you’re measuring yourself against each other. The distortion is that being “better” trumps being “with.”

The happiness one is the most absurd. You see it in certain wellness circles too—everyone trying to out-smile each other, competing to appear the most healed, the most balanced, the most gut flora rich and aggressively non-constipated.

And you see it in the industry that is dating—where attention itself becomes something to compete for. Other people are no longer just people, but click-through rivals in a constant struggle for visibility, validation, and the grand prize of a stint in the chlamydia club. The distortion here is a flattening of human worth, to looks and fantasy value.

But a reminder. Just cos your mate is buying shots like a an annoying executive dickhead, does not mean, on its own, your friendship circle is a narcissistic system. This other stuff, and the tactics we will get to, need to be going on as well.

3. Image Management

This value is really the Metal Band Festival of values here, in terms of how much distortion is going on. And it is one of Christopher Lasch’s big ones—the idea that what matters is not what is real, but what appears to be real. Meaning, if you’re already too hammered to throw the television out the hotel window, but still want to look rock and roll, get the porter to do it, and just SAY it was you.

The image that you are a rock and roll cliché, replaces the reality of a porter, paid off for his silence.

At the individual level, for those who are not rock stars, this shows up as the constant curation of what we present to others, to influence how we are perceived—what Erving Goffman describes as the performance of the self, where social life becomes a kind of stage.

But in narcissistic systems, this goes further. It’s not just individuals managing their own image—it’s entire systems requiring that a particular image of the system itself be maintained.

You can see this clearly in psychological research. For example, Alice Miller shows how, in narcissistic family systems, the child is often burdened with maintaining the family’s mythology—the illusion that they are a happy, normal family, and that no one is quietly being hit with a stick behind the scenes. In such systems, truth becomes a problem, because acknowledging harm would disrupt the image that the system depends on.

Jennifer Freyd shows this pattern at the institutional level—where abuse is denied or minimized, not because it isn’t happening, but because acknowledging it would damage the image of the institution.

Like when dodgy lending practices lead to a financial crisis—and the institutions responsible are then heavily involved in reviewing what went wrong, only to determine that nothing they did is quite bad enough to warrant any real consequences.

Whether families or institutions though, what we see is the same underlying logic: reality is either re-packaged or ignored to ensure the image is protected.

The benefit to those maintaining their advantage in that system, is that their bad behavior, lies or abuse go unacknowledged. Those doing crappy behaviors still get to look all shiney because everyone in the system is obliged to keep saying “the emperors clothes are just so wonderful.”

And really, in the age of influencers and social media, the question isn’t so much “where does this show up”—and more like, “where it does NOT.”

But even so, a few examples.

Such as workplaces where everything is framed as “positive”—no matter how dysfunctional things actually are. Problems aren’t addressed, they’re re-branded as “opportunities.” Hostile takeovers become “gaining market share.” Sacking people becomes “improving efficiency.” Expecting you to do the work of two people is called “rising to the challenge.”

And anything else that is dodgy, morally questionable, or actually illegal is dressed up in a sports metaphor—so it all sounds like a team-building exercise, rather than something that should probably involve a war crimes tribunal.

You see it in social circles too—where people curate the appearance of a perfect life. Those friends who can’t stop telling stories about their kids being geniuses, how important their job is, or how their food choices are saving the planet…
even though they’re in marriage counseling, slowly bankrupting themselves over kale, and have quietly given up their dream of being an astronaut because their partner finds spacesuits passe.

4. Self-Regulation /Control of Emotions.

The aim with this value is control over what one expresses—whether that is words, actions, or emotional displays. Achieving control over all those is framed as superiority, especially over those who display whichever emotions or behaviors the system has tagged as “wrong” or “weird.” Importantly, what counts as “wrong” or weird isn’t decided by you in a narcissistic system. It’s decided by the system itself. The distortion here is that whole sets of behaviors and emotions will not get expressed, even if someone is feeling them. So if I kick you, and you don’t cry or get annoyed, I can claim there were no victims.

Millers work shows us how narcissistic family systems set rules for acceptable behavior, including what emotions one is even allowed to have. This words to ensure the child cannot express discomfort: cannot communicate that something is hurtful or unfair. As Miller shows, this leads to the repression of ones authentic self, in the hope of parental approval. The parent themselves never has to confront the fact that their own actions are actually wrong or hurtful, cos the child is not allowed to show they are.

Sara Ahmed shows how this works on a societal level. Dealing with emotions in particular, she shows how self-regulation becomes a form of social enforcement—where you’re expected to be positive, resilient, and agreeable, regardless of what’s actually happening. “Staying positive” in the face of redundancy, racism, sexism or the loss of an important opportunity, is framed as the right thing to do.

In other words, positive emotions aren’t just encouraged—they’re required. And regulating yourself becomes more than just self-control. It becomes compliance.

We have talked enough about Michel Foucault on this podcast that you will likely recall his contribution. The Panopticon effect, where we internalize the guard, and act in accordance with expectations. We come to see what is EXPECTED, in terms of behaviors and emotions, as what is actually “good” to do. We monitor ourselves accordingly, doing out best to ensure that what we feel, want, or think, matches what is “acceptable”—and trying to avoid feelings, thoughts and behaviors that will get us disapproval.

The advantage for those in power in a narcissistic system is the same at every scale. Their poor treatment of you or others is not just ignored. The person BEING mistreated is often expected to perform positivity when it happens. Cos if everyone looks happy all the time, those in power can claim they are benevolent and humane. You can see how this feeds back into image management, but also a tacit denial of needs.

Because when those being harmed do NOT continue smiling, they can be pegged as the issue themselves. The ultimate distortion, in terms of whose to blame.
Sara Ahmed has words for this phenomena. Those who don’t play along with all this smiling whilst being poked in the eye, become a “killjoy” - either for pointing out the unfairness directly, or just for failing to “stay positive” during mistreatment. Worse still, and vital to those who hold the power, those NOT being currently abused are meant to continue with the pre-approved behaviors too. They too will invite negative treatment for calling out whats actually going on. A code of silence is erected, where no one can speak about wrong doing.

As Ahmed shows, this is not just on the societal level. It creeps into social circles too. Like when someone in the friend group is suffering from depression, or is wrecked by a deep loss or failure. If that system is narcissistic, the person will be deemed “a drag” or be excluded from events. Their failure to procure the “right vibe” resulting in punishment via ostracization.

5. Conditional Belonging

This is the final value, before I give you that concise and easy tool I mentioned.

From that last section, you might already get the vibe from Alice Miller’s work, that narcissistic systems put us in a position of hoping to please those in power. In her work, the whole pattern is focusing on what those in power want, and behaving according to their rules in order to win approval. Scaled up to workplaces, institutions, and society, the very same logic applies. Our focus is directed towards gaining approval from those running the system we are in.

And that approval determines something very simple:

Who gets to belong — and who does not.

Because in a narcissistic system, belonging is not a given. It is conditional. Two key conditions for belonging is are:
- Your compliance, in terms of adopting all the values mentioned so far.
but also,
- your usefulness.

Miller’s work makes it clear that behaving in the required manner is a condition of belonging in narcissistic family systems. And that not doing so results in ostracization, exile, or a tactic we will meet in part two, scapegoating.

Judith Butler helps us see how this scales up. She shows that even being legible as a person is contingent on performance — meaning, performing in pre-defined ways, and in accordance with what is deemed OK. Butler echoes that what counts as acceptable behavior is defined by the system, not by you. The result is that there are only a limited number of ways you are allowed to be. Step outside of those — and belonging is withdrawn.

You might recognize this most clearly in the policing of gender. When people don’t conform to expected roles — whether in behavior, relationships, or identity — the response is often not curiosity, but exclusion, ridicule, or worse.

So the specifics vary, depending on the size of the system, but the pattern is the same:
fail to perform what is expected — and you risk losing your place in the system.

The threat of exclusion is what enforces the behaviors. There are a limited number of ways one is allowed to be. The risk of being cast out becomes the incentive to comply to them.

But lets hone in on the part about being USEFUL to these systems. Because sometimes compliance on its own is not enough. Sometimes, you don’t just have to behave correctly. You also have to be useful in the correct way.

The most obvious example comes from Karl Marx. Marx shows how ones usefulness can take the form of labour—where your value is defined by what you produce and how much can be extracted from you. Fail to meet your targets and you’re done. In narcissistic systems, the context of your drop in output is ignored. Death of a loved one, stress related illness due to spreadsheet overexposure, the growing pressure to ‘bringing your best self to work’ — even if that self died three deadlines ago, and would likely have run off to form a grunge band.

And yet usefulness in narcissistic systems extends beyond production.

As Erving Goffman shows, social life is structured around maintaining appearances—and some people’s usefulness resides in upholding the image of others. Think social circles, where the big shot executive likes to be seen with rich and famous people, who he uses to boost his credibility.

This is also what Pierre Bourdieu discusses; social capital—where your value lies in how you enhance someone else’s position. It is clear here how this is very tied to image management, but that fact leads to some interesting outcomes. Because even those who don’t fully comply can still be useful to the system.

Think political parties with strongly traditional values placing a female politician at the front — not to change those values, but to soften how they appear.
A more insidious and depressing one comes from the workplace. When diversity hiring fails to be about valuing people of different backgrounds, and is used exclusively to make a company look less racist, less anti LGBTQ, less able-ist, etc, than they actually are. In other words when diversity is not about genuinely giving a shit, but is used purely as a surface-level fix to mask the absence of any real change. An image overhaul, with the same narcissistic values behind the shiney new image.

In each case, your value is not about you as a person—its about how you can be used to facilitate the system looking good as it is.

The distortion is that real belonging was even on offer.

Because like ALL these values, they slot together for form a foundation for a world in which the individual becomes responsible for maintaining the system’s image - at their own personal cost.

A Useful Tool For Spotting Values

So far there have been some serious tools in terms of our example characters, but here is a USEFUL tool. Because what follows is a simple way to know if the values being promoted around you, potentially indicate a narcissistic system. It’s a set of short questions you can ask yourself. You might even want to read through to these with some troubling system you are part of in mind, to test it out. This might be your workplace, a relationship, a club, an institution, or even just the society you live in.

Radical Individual Responsibility:
Am I being made responsible for something that isn’t actually in my control — and if I push back on that, am I made to feel it IS my responsibility, or that I am being unreasonable?
Competition as Natural Order
Am I being pushed to compete with others — and does it feel like cooperating with them cost me something?
Image Management
What would happen if I openly named a real problem here — would that cost me belonging or approval?
Self-Regulation
What happens if I express what I actually feel — do I lose status, approval, or safety?
Conditional Belonging
What happens to people here when they stop conforming — are they excluded, ignored, refused resources, or pushed out?
Being of Use
What happens when someone here stops being useful — or starts needing something instead?

Now, as mentioned, no single one of these on its own is enough to diagnose a system. What we’re looking for is a pattern — values reinforcing one another to help produce distortions that prop up the advantage of those who already hold it. So if several of these values start to feel familiar — especially when there’s a cost to not complying — that’s your signal to pay attention.

And don’t worry about getting a definitive answer just yet. That is what part two is for, which will be out next week. These will come out one a week for three weeks, instead of the usual 2 week gaps. In part two, we look at the tactics. Remember, values set the stage, and tactics ensure that you follow the script. So we’ll be looking at tactics in depth, but some of them will be familiar to you. Blame shifting, Triangulation, Gaslighting, Moving goalposts, Pathologising Non-Compliant Behaviours, Scapegoating and more. We will see how these rely on the values we talked about today, along with examples from every size of fractal.

Another tool is coming your way to help you identify those. Because when you put it all together, something important becomes very clear: if you are in a narcissistic system, you are not the problem. The system is.

And once you see that, something might change, because the isolation starts to make sense.
The self-blame starts to loosen, and the question stops being “What’s wrong with me?”
and becomes “Where are the people who can see this too?”

That’s the real turning point. Not just recognising the system—but finding others who recognise it as well. Because these systems don’t just distort reality. They separate you from the people who would confirm it.

So this is the counter-move.Not more self-improvement. Not trying harder to fit something that was never built for you. But finding each other. Finding spaces where you don’t have to compete to belong. Where you don’t have to perform to be accepted. Where naming what’s real doesn’t cost you your place. That’s what we’re building with the community around the podcast that these posts are essentially the transcripts of.

So if something clicked when you were reading—if parts of your experience suddenly made sens—then you are exactly who this is for. An example of such a place is our Discord community. It’s where people step out of those systems, and start relating differently. No image management. No conditional belonging. No quiet punishments for being human. Just people who’ve seen it—and don’t need to pretend otherwise.

If that’s something you’ve been missing, come and find us by heading to https://www.patreon.com/c/TheLonelinessIndustry and supporting what we do. You get to the discord group from there.

I hope to see you soon, and til then, thanks for reading.